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Crosshair should have been asleep, he knew that much. Unfortunately for him, his mind simply would not let him rest. This was not an unusual thing for him, especially not since his return to his squad. Having his chip removed (finally) had done a number on him, and he often found himself sat up at night regardless of whether or not it was his turn to be on watch. Glancing at the time on his holo, he groaned quietly. He still had four hours left of his sleep cycle. No point in getting up unless he wanted to be subjected to questioning from Echo, who was currently on watch in the cockpit.
A rustle behind his head caught his attention and he sat up in bed. The moving of fabric ceased, and for a moment Crosshair was about to dismiss it as his sleep-deprived mind finally losing it… when it happened again.
The clone raised an eyebrow, trying to identify where exactly the sound was coming from. He glanced at the sleeping forms of his brothers; Tech was passed out in a chair, a holo pad hanging loosely from his hand. Hunter was in the bunk opposite his own, ear plugs in to prevent the noises of the ship from waking him up. Wrecker was snoring above him, dead to the world. No, this sound hadn’t come from any of his brothers. That left one more person…
As though she had sensed him thinking about her, Omega’s head popped out from her curtain; she appeared to be half asleep, and Crosshair couldn’t help but roll his eyes. One of these days she was going to be so tired when leaving the gunner’s mount that she’d surely fall.
She clearly hadn’t seen him awake, as she pulled back the curtain to her bunk quietly and began to descend the ladder. The older clone was about to lie back down and try to sleep when something odd caught his eye.
When he saw Omega leaving her bed, he simply assumed that she was going to the ‘fresher or to replenish her water canteen… he had not been expecting her to start dragging half of her bedding down the ladder with her. Not daring to move, just in case he spooked her, he sat silently as he observed the little girl tug at the bedding as it got caught. She tugged at it a few times, her frustration clear on her face, but then with one mighty tug it came loose.
Omega stumbled, and had Crosshair not lunged out of bed to catch her, she would have hit her head on the floor of the cabin.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed at her, trying not to wake his brothers. Omega looked at him with wide eyes. He noticed that she was trembling, but put it down to being cold. “You could’ve hurt yourself. You shouldn’t be traipsing around the cabin with your bedding like a toddler!” he scowled at her and picked up a handful of blanket to prove that the thing was huge and could easily make her trip up, but dropped it again when his hand was met with a damp patch. That, he had not been expecting.
If it was possible, Omega’s eyes widened even more, the horror evident on her face. Her whole frame was shuddering now, and Crosshair didn’t need to have jedi powers to know that she was terrified… of him? Of the predicament she was in? Both? Sighing, he crouched down to her height. She flinched away from him, a small squeak of fear escaping her as she did so. Crosshair noted the dark circles under her eyes, the way that her bottom lip trembled as her eyes filled with tears that she was too scared to shed.
“Has this happened before?” he asked, trying desperately to make his voice sound as calm as possible. When he didn’t get a response, he took that as a yes and stood at his full height once more. Now that he thought about it, he could vaguely smell the liquid that was the cause of her late-night trip. He made towards the ‘fresher, picking up the bedding with a grimace and nodding for her to follow him.
On his way to the ‘fresher, Crosshair bundled the soggy bedding up and threw it into the small machine they used to clean their blacks. He worked quickly, acutely aware of the trembling little girl behind him and before long, the gentle whir of the machine could be heard. He entered the ‘fresher and washed his hands before turning to Omega. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment and she was desperately trying to hold back tears.
“I-I’m so sorry, Cr-Crosshair,” she stammered out, her bottom lip still trembling. He sighed once more and crouched down again, making himself as close to her height as possible.
“Do you have a change of clothes?” he asked, not addressing her apology. She shook her head and he noted that at least she was responding to him now. Nodding, he leaned out of the ‘fresher and grabbed some of the first clothes he came across; they happened to be an old pair of Hunter’s blacks. Ones that had been shrunk in the washer by mistake. He plopped them in Omega’s arms and stood to his full height again.
“Have a shower, change into these, and throw those clothes out here when you’re out of them.”
He was surprised at the softness in his own voice, but the relief on Omega’s face told him that it had been the right thing to do. He left the room, and moments later the door opened only for a small pile of clothes to be thrown out. Wrinkling his nose slightly at the smell, he opened the top of the washer (how dehydrated was this kid?) and put them in with the blanket. He only moved again once he heard the sound of the shower running.
His first move was to check the rest of the bedding in her bunk; he climbed up the ladder quietly and glanced around. He hadn’t really been up here since returning to the Marauder, but looking around he snorted at how much the gunner’s mount had changed. It definitely looked more like a child’s bedroom than the access to the ship’s canons. There was an odd collection of pebbles, shells, dried flowers… you name it, on one of the shelves. Omega had clearly been picking up little trinkets on her travels, wanting to savour every part of the planets she had visited.
Looking up, his attention was drawn to the various pictures, clearly drawn by the child, stuck on the walls of the gunner’s mount. Crosshair would deny it if anyone asked, but he felt a small smile cross his face as he looked closer at the drawings. There were some of Lula, and various attempts at drawing the other inhabitants of the ship, but there was one picture that caught his attention. It was a clumsy drawing, where the people in it looked a little like potatoes with arms and legs, but the labelling made it clear who it was meant to be. It was all of them, smiling; he snorted at the box that had clearly been drawn to represent Gonky.
Snapping himself out of whatever emotion he was experiencing, he looked to the floor of the bunk; luckily the GAR issue bed rolls had a plastic coating, making them wipe clean. Crosshair set to work wiping down the bed with a cloth and some cleaning spray he had sourced on his way out of the fresher. Once that had been seen to, he descended the ladder to the gunner’s mount and went to his own bunk, opening a compartment and digging out two blankets. One he tucked around the sides of the roll mat, vaguely remembering a conversation he’d had with Hunter about the little girl hating the feel of the plastic mattress because it reminded her of the medbay on Kamino. The second, he draped over the mattress to act as a quilt. Replacing the pillow, Lula and Trooper on the bed, he climbed out of the bunk once more and sat on his own.
As he waited for Omega to emerge from the ‘fresher, he placed a toothpick between his lips. Maker, he missed smoking at times like these. He couldn’t get the image of the child shaking with fear, flinching away from him as though she expected him to lash out at her. Guilt filled him for a moment; was that what she truly thought of him? Reasoning took over a moment later. She hadn’t reacted like this to him at any other point… this was a learned fear. The guilt in his stomach turned to anger. He knew exactly who had made her scared in this way, and it filled him with rage.
The quiet hiss of the ‘fresher door snapped him out of his thoughts, and an exhausted looking Omega emerged. She was dressed in Hunter’s old blacks and had tried to roll them up a little, though she still looked as though she was drowning in them. Rolling his eyes, he left his bunk and walked to hers, opening the curtain and crouching to pick her up. She let out a squeak of surprise when he lifted her and placed her gently at the top of the ladder, her legs dangling over the edge of her room.
Now that she was back in the gunner’s mount she looked around, noticing straight away that her bed had clean blankets on it. The embarrassed flush returned to her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, not daring to look in his direction as she shuffled a little further into the bunk, bringing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs. “I should’ve just dealt with it on my own.”
Crosshair was having none of it and he climbed the first few rungs of the ladder, bringing their heads to roughly the same level. “You know,” he whispered after a moment’s thought. “You’re not the first clone I’ve met who ends up in this… predicament from time to time…” he trailed off, hoping that his words had somewhat reassured her. She was looking at him now, her eyes filled with curiosity rather than shame.
“Really?” she asked, and he nodded in response. The truth was, he’d been that clone. Luckily his brothers had always been supportive, and Tech had gone to extreme lengths to inform him that bed wetting was common in children that were suffering, or had recently suffered some sort of trauma. Crosshair wasn’t stupid. He knew what Nala Se and Lama Su had been using Omega for, the experiments they had performed on her on a regular basis. No wonder she was traumatised.
“It usually only happens when I have nightmares… but not all the time,” she commented. “I try not to drink too much so that it doesn’t happen,” her eyes filled with tears. “But that didn’t work today.”
The older clone climbed further up the ladder and perched on the edge of the gunner’s mount. “You need to drink water,” he chided gently. “You’re no good to us all shrivelled up like a prune.”That at least brought a giggle out of the girl. Crosshair made a note to himself to make sure that Omega was drinking enough water during the day. No need to inform the others, not unless it got more serious.
A yawn from the child broke him from his momentary spiral. Her eyes drooped and she shuffled so that she was underneath the blanket he had placed on her bed. In her arms were Lula and Trooper, and it was in that moment that Crosshair was reminded of just how young she truly was.
“C-could you stay with me?” She looked slightly shy as she made the request. “Only until I fall asleep, I don’t want to annoy you…” She looked up at her brother with big eyes and the older clone cursed silently to himself. How could he say no to that face?
Nodding, Crosshair swung his legs up into the bunk and sat with his back against the wall. If that was what she needed right now, he guessed he could do that for her. It wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep anyway. A tired smile crossed Omega’s face as she held her soft toys closer.
“Thanks, Cross,” she mumbled sleepily, and within moments she was dozing off. The man in question couldn’t help the yawn that escaped him as he rested his head against the wall he was leaning on. He would stay for just a few more minutes, to make sure that she was truly asleep. Then he would go back to his bunk…
Echo walked into the cabin of the Marauder, looking forward to the start of his sleep rotation. He looked at Crosshair’s empty bunk and raised an eyebrow. That wasn’t right. The door to the fresher was open, so he wasn’t in there… and unless he was hiding in a crate somewhere, there weren’t many other places he could be.
A light snore coming from the gunner’s mount made Echo’s head snap in that direction. He quietly crept towards the curtain and pulled it back, grinning at what he found. At some point, not long after Omega had dozed off again, Crosshair had fallen asleep himself. Now Echo found him curled protectively around the little girl, her face buried in his blacks as she clutched Lula with one arm and held onto one of his hands with the other. Rolling his eyes, Echo backed down the ladder and shut the curtain again. He supposed he could go a couple more hours before sleeping.